Friday, August 03, 2007

HM Revenue and Customs seizing cars

My final Liberal Democrat News column until the autumn.

Unpleasant customs

The Commons broke up for the summer last Thursday. Almost the last business was the the adjournment debate -- a sort of parliamentary bring-and-buy sale where a few MPs turn up to ride their hobby-horses or bring up a constituency matter and impress their local paper. Even so, there was at least one point of interest.

Keith Vaz raised the case of one of his Leicester East constituents, Abder Razak Filali-Tomouh. He had made a weekend trip to the Continent and come back with lots of tobacco. But he was under the legal limit, and when customs stopped his car and asked why he had so much, he explained that it was for him and his family to use.

He had broken no law, but the tobacco was impounded.

And so was his car.

When Vaz took the case up he received a letter from the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury confirming that this is standard practice. Yes, HM Revenue and Customs has the power to take people’s cars away from them even when no offence has been committed.

As Vaz said, this is "draconian and bizarre". But you have to ask where he has been for the last decade. David Laws called a Westminster Hall debate on just this abuse as long ago as October 2002 [see 8 November House Points].

More than that, the idea that you do not need to have broken the law to be punished is central to the Labour view of the world. Take our old friend the ASBO. If you breach the terms of one you can be sent to prison for anything up to five years, but you need never have been found guilty of any crime.

If the Human Rights Act or the European Convention are worth anything, then Mr Filali-Tomouh must be able to force HM Revenue and Customs to give him his car back. But there is a problem. He cannot afford legal representation and, in Vaz's words "as we know, the government has cut legal aid over the past few years for people in same position as my constituent".

So he can only raise this monstrous injustice with his MP. And his MP can only raise it on the last day of term when few people are listening.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

There is no 'limit' for intra-EC travellers. There is a minimum indicative level over which officer's suspicions may cause them to consider excise goods as being potentially liable for commercial resale. However, even under the MIL officers may still be suspicious that excise goods are likely to be resold. HMRC officers are asked by the Government to be Judge & Jury and they have no choice but to weigh up the evidence before them and make a judgement call.